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Gustav

Texan

Well-known member
I had posted this tracking map in Political Bull in a thread talking about New Orleans, but thought some of the rest of you might want to keep up with it.

It refreshes every time the Hurricane Center updates, so you can keep checking this post through landfall for the latest position and predicted track.


203813W_sm.gif
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
Keep them huri/himicanes coming....One of the guys neighboring me was just checking fastly drying up waterholes today- and tomorrow I have to help a friend move his heifers out of the pasture they are in- because the water has all dried up...

We got to talking about 1986- the year my youngest was born-- we had a spring flood, with closed roads for about 2 weeks- and then in October we had one of those huri/himicanes that spun off and came north and created a rain that that dropped 4-8 inches on the whole area- and filled waterholes like we never saw- and flooded the river bottoms so bad my wife had to stay in town because the river flooded the roads shut and I didn't want a pregnant wife stuck out there :roll: ...

Always told my daughter that if she had some Sioux blood- she'd have been named Two Floods... :wink: :lol:

Need that again....
 

nr

Well-known member
And they're talking about possibly evacuating New Orleans though Lake Poncetraine is rebuilt. Those poor people!

Thanks for posting the map- another neat function of the internet.
 

the_jersey_lilly_2000

Well-known member
Well it's already started here. Stations are out of fuel in alot of areas. Traffic is gettin bumper to bumper. And this really sucks, cuz we are scheduled for a trip to Waco for Lil Lilly to run at a Big Barrel Race on Monday. If she doesn't make this one, she won't qualify for the Finals........She's just a tad upset I think. I know I am, for her.
They are talking about opening up South bound lanes for Northern traffic as well as the North bound lanes too. So.....if we did go, and it's still North bound on Tuesday, we can't come home. Plus who knows if there'd be fuel available to get us home on. Unless we take our own LOL which is a possiblity. But still......this sucks.
 

nr

Well-known member
Maybe they'll reschedule that race?

What a headache for all those in the Gulf states. Condolences to Lil Lily :( and may you all come through this unscathed.
 

jigs

Well-known member
Oldtimer said:
Keep them huri/himicanes coming....One of the guys neighboring me was just checking fastly drying up waterholes today- and tomorrow I have to help a friend move his heifers out of the pasture they are in- because the water has all dried up...

We got to talking about 1986- the year my youngest was born-- we had a spring flood, with closed roads for about 2 weeks- and then in October we had one of those huri/himicanes that spun off and came north and created a rain that that dropped 4-8 inches on the whole area- and filled waterholes like we never saw- and flooded the river bottoms so bad my wife had to stay in town because the river flooded the roads shut and I didn't want a pregnant wife stuck out there :roll: ...

Always told my daughter that if she had some Sioux blood- she'd have been named Two Floods... :wink: :lol:

Need that again....
the rain, or the pregnant wife ???
 

kolanuraven

Well-known member
the_jersey_lilly_2000 said:
Well it's already started here. Stations are out of fuel in alot of areas. Traffic is gettin bumper to bumper. And this really sucks, cuz we are scheduled for a trip to Waco for Lil Lilly to run at a Big Barrel Race on Monday. If she doesn't make this one, she won't qualify for the Finals........She's just a tad upset I think. I know I am, for her.
They are talking about opening up South bound lanes for Northern traffic as well as the North bound lanes too. So.....if we did go, and it's still North bound on Tuesday, we can't come home. Plus who knows if there'd be fuel available to get us home on. Unless we take our own LOL which is a possiblity. But still......this sucks.


We're starting to see things up here also.

People are showing up with LA tags on trucks & cars with stuff loaded to the gills.

The 3 motels in the next town ( as we don't have any motels near abouts) are either full or filling up.

Haven't noticed any problems with lack of fuel....but the price is already sneaking up.
 

Texan

Well-known member
Canadian Forces plane heading to New Orleans as hurricane Gustav nears

1 hour ago

OTTAWA — Canada is sending aid to New Orleans to help with the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of residents as hurricane Gustav charges across the Gulf of Mexico.

Isabelle Hotte of the Department of National Defence says a Canadian Forces C-17 plane carrying a team of medical personnel is leaving today for New Orleans to help with air evacuations.

Gustav crossed western Cuba on Saturday and has already killed more than 80 people in the Caribbean.

The hurricane could bring a storm surge of up to six metres to the coast and rainfall totals of up to 38 centimetres.

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, who called the hurricane "the mother of all storms," has issued a mandatory evacuation order, as well as a dusk-to-dawn curfew.

The Department of Foreign Affairs in Ottawa is advising Canadians against non-essential travel to the northern coast of the Gulf of Mexico, including the city of New Orleans.

A department spokesperson says about 4,000 Canadians are believed to be in Louisiana and up to 30,000 in Texas.

Hurricane Gustav, a Category three storm, is expected to hit the area as early as Monday morning. It comes almost exactly three years after hurricane Katrina devastated the area in 2005.

Copyright © 2008 The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.



http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5g3TZ8yrgA0p6DGLhXEgijqImDMew
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
jigs said:
Oldtimer said:
Keep them huri/himicanes coming....One of the guys neighboring me was just checking fastly drying up waterholes today- and tomorrow I have to help a friend move his heifers out of the pasture they are in- because the water has all dried up...

We got to talking about 1986- the year my youngest was born-- we had a spring flood, with closed roads for about 2 weeks- and then in October we had one of those huri/himicanes that spun off and came north and created a rain that that dropped 4-8 inches on the whole area- and filled waterholes like we never saw- and flooded the river bottoms so bad my wife had to stay in town because the river flooded the roads shut and I didn't want a pregnant wife stuck out there :roll: ...

Always told my daughter that if she had some Sioux blood- she'd have been named Two Floods... :wink: :lol:

Need that again....
the rain, or the pregnant wife ???


RAIN- RAIN-- no more pregnant wives :roll: :shock: ...Maybe ol Gustav will head north and dump us several inches.....
 

Texan

Well-known member
All of the talk on the news is about New Orleans, but this hurricane has it's sights set squarely on a little craphole of a place just south and west of New Orleans called Fourchon - or more accurately, Port Fourchon. Because of it's importance to our nations's energy supply, it's almost unbelievable that this area is being overlooked by the news media.

Of the 4,000 or so offshore platforms in the Gulf, there are probably 1,000 of them within 50 or 60 miles of Fourchon. Fourchon services most of the deepwater drilling that goes on in the Gulf of Mexico. And there's only one way to get there - a narrow little two lane road called LA1.

Not only do all of the offshore workers have to travel down this two lane road, but all of the materials to service the deepwater rigs and platforms have to go down it, too. Everything from pipe to groceries goes down this road to eventually make it's way onto a boat to go out to the rigs.

Fourchon is just south of Leeville, Louisiana and you have to go through Leeville to get there. It's really kinda hard to imagine the vulnerability of South Louisiana if you've never been there. This is known as the Leeville bridge and this is what it looks like under under normal conditions:

pic_bridge-aerial.jpg



Although you can barely see it because of the water on each side of it, this is the road that goes on south to the Port of Fourchon. Imagine what a 20 or 30 foot storm surge will do to that road...

Because of the depth of the muck, it takes years and years to build roads and infrastructure in South Louisiana. A storm the size of this one has the capability to just wipe it off of the face of the Earth.

As important as it is to service the rigs and production facilities that are operating in the Gulf, there's an equally important facility just off of Fourchon known as the LOOP - the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port. This is where the big tankers dock - the ones that are too large to get into other inland ports.

Through this port, about 15% of the entire country's imported oil flows into underground storage. From there it flows into underground pipelines that move it on to the refineries along the Gulf Coast that represent about half of this country's refining capacity. Although most of these pipelines are underground and under the Gulf, they are still vulnerable to a storm of this size.

And this storm is headed almost directly for this place that almost nobody has ever heard of - this little place known as Fourchon. This storm is NOT just about New Orleans and it's NOT just about South Louisiana. This storm will affect the entire country.
 

Texan

Well-known member
There's also a lot more cattle in South Louisiana than many people realize. They have to cope with some of the same things that the people do. But life goes on - the AVMA journal had this good pic after hurricane Katrina:

051101e1.jpg


A storm surge the size of this one will wash cattle inland for miles and miles. And almost just as quickly, it will wash a lot of them back out into the Gulf. Commercial fishermen will be finding cattle carcasses in their nets for a long time after a storm this size.

People outside of New Orleans are pretty self-sufficient. The oil and gas industry workers are quick to get back to work rebuilding - both homes and infrastructure. And you won't find many cattlemen in South Louisiana standing around waiting on FEMA, either.

This article was in HPJ after Hurricane Rita:



Louisiana cattlemen lose thousands of cattle to Hurricane Rita

JOHNSON BAYOU, La. (AP)--Billy Griffith still dresses like a cowboy: Blue jeans, boots and cowboy hat. But the lifelong cattleman has lost most of his cattle.

Griffith owned about 150 cows, bulls and calves before Hurricane Rita ravaged his pastures in September. Just 45 survived; the rest drowned in the floodwaters that surged over Johnson Bayou on Louisiana's southwestern coast.

Griffith had expected the storm to swerve west, into Texas.

"I was wrong, and we got caught," he said. "When that storm turned, it was too late to get the cattle out."

He and many other Louisiana cattlemen are now facing a shaky future.

Rita killed tens of thousands of cattle in Louisiana. Miles of the Gulf Coast's lush pastures were scorched by salt water that left the grass dead and inedible to livestock. Some areas are still flooded, a month after Rita struck.

Economists said it is too soon to tell how badly the storm damaged the state's cattle industry, which in 2004 was Louisiana's second-largest agricultural sector, with about $365 million in sales.

Scientists in late October began testing the grass to see how badly the pastures are damaged, and how quickly they can be used for grazing again. The region has had almost no rain since the storm to dilute the salt in the soil.

"We're probably looking at years away from getting back to normal," said Kent LeDoux, manager of a Johnson Bayou cattle ranch. "With the salt on the pastures, we don't know how long it will take for that to recover."

Groups of cattlemen were allowed to return three days after Rita hit. Several said they saw scores of dead cows littering the fields. Some carcasses were covered up to their necks in piles of debris, with only their heads poking through.

Cattlemen on horseback began herding the survivors.

"Cowboys rounded up all the animals on high ground and the highways," LeDoux said. "It didn't matter whose brand was on the cow, everybody worked together to save the cow, regardless of ownership."

The animals were jumpy and nervous after enduring the flooding and 120 mph winds and surviving for days without food or fresh water.

"They were worn out from swimming so much in the water," cattleman Robert Trahan said.

The carcasses were collected in front-end loaders and dump trucks, then taken to incinerators, though some remain in the marshes.

In all, Rita killed between 20,000 and 25,000 head of cattle in Louisiana, out of a statewide population of 180,000, according to a survey by the Louisiana State University Cooperative Extension Service.

Griffith said he lost about $100,000 worth of livestock.

He and other cattlemen said they will be forced to sell the animals that survived to cover the expense of cleaning up their drenched homes or buying new ones, and replacing the tractors and hay balers ruined by the floodwaters.

Not even the surviving cattle are worth much. The animals are known as "storm cows," less valuable because their health is threatened by pneumonia and digestion problems from swallowing salt water and going without fresh water.

Griffith said he expects to sell his surviving cattle, then buy more after he replaces his ruined home.

At 77, he is a third-generation cattleman who before the storm was already partly retired from the cowboy life. He said he is not sure how soon he will be raising livestock again. It depends on how soon the brown pastures turn green again.

"If we don't get a lot of rain, it could take a couple of years," Griffith said. "But nobody's been through this before. So nobody knows. We're just guessing."

Date: 11/23/05



http://www.hpj.com/archives/2005/nov05/nov28/Louisianacattlemenlosethous.cfm
 

Turkey Track Bar

Well-known member
Texan:

Thank you for posting that...very informative.

I have a good friend who is a cow doc in LA, Dr. Billy Robinson. He is quite a character. The pictures and stories he had after Katrina were amazing. Some of the most amazing to me were of bulls floating out in the ocean. If I remember correctly, he said bulls float and cows sink in the ocean. He said rig workers 50 to 60 miles off the coast would see cattle floating, sometimes alive.

I hold our fellow ranchers in LA in my thoughts and prayers. I can only imagine what they are going through trying to prepare for Gustav. It must be a fairly hopeless feeling trying to prepare...it's not like it's easy to gather and load cattle and then find a place for them after you get them out. The mental and physical stress must be huge.

To the coastal ranchers and communities, you all are in our thoughts and prayers.

Cheers---

TTB :wink:
 

the_jersey_lilly_2000

Well-known member
Well......we are goin to Waco!!!!!!! She's gonna get to qualify for the finals!!!! Woo Hoo!!!! Traffic here isn't bad at all. So we'll be leavin bright and early in the mornin.......I say bright...it's gonna be before "bright and early" happens. LOL

But our thoughts and prayers will be with those dealing with this storm.
 

Turkey Track Bar

Well-known member
Lilly...

I'm so sorry Gustav is putting a hiccup in Lil' Lilly's barrel racing plans. I hope everything works out for the best for you guys.

I sure seems like Gustav has arrived here...winds are currently 55 mph with gusts higher :shock: and it's 94 degrees. I hope the rain they are predicting tomorrow and Tuesday comes in with this wind.

Cheers---

TTB :wink:
 

the_jersey_lilly_2000

Well-known member
Well, there's a lot worse things that could happen, than just a lil glitch in our plans. Know what I mean. We are sticklers for safety first. If it looked like this was gonna cause us any major problems we wouldn't be goin. But things are lookin ok. There have been a bunch of runners tho from LA, and South East Texas that haven't been able to make it.
Just got word tho, that the Producers of the Barrel race, are givin entry fee's back to those that can't make it. That's real nice on their part. Cuz it's not somethin they "hafta do" but Booger Barter (the producer) is one really cool fella, and he knows good business practices.
 
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